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Reprinted from Scribner’s Magazine for June, i 
in an edition of forty copies for private 
distribution, by the courtesy of 
Charles Scribner’s Sons 


THE SOLDIERS' RECESSIONAL 


BY 



WITH ILLUSTRATION BY 

F. C. YOHN 


NEW YORK 
PRIVATELY PRINTED 

I905 

COPYRIGHT, I905, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, NEW YORK 




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1 

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i 




THE SOLDIERS’ RECESSIONAL 

D OWN from the choir with feebled step and slow, 
Singing their brave recessional they go. 

Gray, broken choristers of war : 

Bearing aloft before their age-dimmed eyes, 

As ’twere their cross, for sign of sacrifice, 

The flags which they in battle bore, — 

11 

Down from the choir where late their hoarse throats sang 
Till all the sky-arched vast cathedral rang 
With echoes of their rough-made song : 

Where roared the organ’s deep artillery, 

And screamed the slender pipes’ dread minstrelsy 
In fierce debate of right and wrong. 


Down past the altar, bright with flowers, they tread 
The aisles ’neath which in sleep their comrades dead 
Keep bivouac after their red strife, 

Their own ranks thinner growing as they march 
Into the shadows of the narrow arch 
Which hides the lasting from this life. 


IV 


Soon, soon will pass the last gray pilgrim through, 
Of that thin line in surplices of blue 
Winding as some tired stream a-sea ; 

Soon, soon will sound upon our list’ning ears 
His last song’s quaver as he disappears 
Beyond our answering litany; 

v 

And soon the faint antiphonal refrain, 

Which memory repeats in sweetened strain, 

Will come as from some far cloud-shore ; 

Then, fora space the hush of unspoke prayer, 

And we who’ve knelt shall rise with heart to dare 
The thing in peace they sang in war. 


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